Mozart Entertainment
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In the review of Darren Aronofsky’s film, The Fountain, Jeremy Osgood
wrote the following in his funny-titled article Dude. Like, Where’s
the Script which was published in the The Pulse "…it demonstrates
too much faith in the beauty of his images. There is, of course, a
place for purely visual cinema. It is a place filled by the likes of
Parajanov and Reggio who produce work that is stunning…"
Incidentally, Godfrey Reggio had recently received the Parajanov Award
at the Golden Apricot Yerevan International Film Festival in Armenia.
Martin Vardanov’s Erased Faces II has been postponed again, now till
2007, due to difficulties with getting the clips of Mikhail Vartanov’s
films out of Armenia. In 2007, Vartanov turns 70, Parajanov: The Last
Spring turns 15 and and a few celebrations are planned in Europe, US
and, hopefully, Armenia. It is hoped that these events will help bring
more attention to the very little known master and his oeuvre which
has been suppressed for decades and till this day virtually never been
shown to the general public.
In Bucharest, Romania, Sergei Paradjanov’s Color of Pomegranates and
Hagop Hovnatanian as well as Atom Egoyan’s Ararat were screened in
November during Days of Armenian Cinema. The latter film is about the
Armenian Genocide perpetrated by Turkish government in 1915. On a
related note, Sylvester Stallone told Denver Post that he had always
wanted to make a film about the Armenian Genocide based on Franz
Werfel’s famous novel 40 Days of Musa Dagh: "…an epic about the
complete destruction of a civilization…The Turks have been killing
that subject for 85 years."
In Armenia, an exhibition dedicated to the 200th anniversary of Hagop
Hovnatanian opened on Wednesday at the National Library of Armenia.
Congratulations to the creators of the documentary Screamers for
winning the AFI Los Angeles International Film Festival’s Audience
Award for Best Documentary.
Festival International du Film d’Amiens, which took place 10 – 19
November 2006, screened Sergei Paradjanov’s Color of Pomegranates and
Amo Bek-Nazarov’s silent Zangezur.
Mohammed Shine of Kerala, India recently wrote in his blog that Kamara
Kamalova’s new movie Road Under the Skies’ "…surreal scenes of
colourful but abstract local mythology smacks of the master Sergei
Paradjanov…"
In France, La Cinémathèque de Toulouse begins a retrospective of
Armenian films, called Fragments d’Arménie on 1 Januray 2007. During
the month of January all post 1964 films of Sergei Paradjanov will be
screened along with the work of Amo Bek-Nazarov, Atom Egoyan, Bagrat
Oganesyan, Albert Lazarian as well as Artavazd Pelechian’s We and
Seasons.
Robert Kelly wrote the following in his paper presented at the
Princeton Conference on Magic and Cinema: "Interesting that throughout
the government direction of the arts in the USSR, film found its way
to magic and wonder only through treatment of folklore. The same route
that the German Romantics had followed to escape the inexorable
rationality of the Enlightenment became the way through the
penny-plain austerities of Socialist Realism and beyond into splendor
– the work of Parajanian/Parajanov, the great Armenian-Russian
director contains magnificent examples of this liberation."